1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a field emission display which applies a field emission device (or field emitter) to a flat panel display.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, the field emission display includes a lower plate having field emitters and an upper plate coated with a fluorescent material such as phosphor. The field emission display indicates a picture on a screen on which the electrons emitted from field emitters, at the lower plate, come into collision with the fluorescent material on the upper plate. This display, which uses a cathode luminescence of the fluorescent material, has been widely developed as a flat panel display which can be substituted for the cathode ray tube (CRT).
FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating a configuration of the lower plate in a conventional field emission display. As shown in FIG. 1, a scan wiring 11P and a data wiring 12P are arranged in a matrix type and each pixel consists of a plurality of metal field emitters 21P whose gates are coupled to the scan wiring 11P. The scan wiring 11P is coupled to the output terminal of a scan driving circuit chip 30P through interconnects 13P. The emitter electrode of field emitters 21P is coupled to the data wiring 12P and the data wiring 12P is couple to the output terminal of a data driving circuit chip 40P through interconnects 14P. Furthermore, the scan driving circuit chip 30P and the data driving circuit chip 40P are not integrated together with the pixel array of the field emitter, and are formed on a discrete silicon wafer, being coupled to the pixel array.
On the other hand, FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view illustrating a conventional metal field emitter 21P in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 2, the conventional metal field emitter 21P includes an emitter electrode 215P formed on an insulating substrate 10P, a resist layer 211P, which is made of an amorphous silicon layer, formed on the emitter electrode 215P, a metal field emitter tip 212P formed in a cone type on a portion of the resist layer 211P, and a gate insulating layer 213P and a gate electrode 214P for applying a voltage to the emitter tip 212P.
The conventional field emission display may be easily fabricated on a large glass substrate by using the electron beam evaporation method. However, it is very difficult to integrate the scan and data driving circuits with the metal field emitter array on the insulating substrate. Accordingly, the metal wiring requires a great deal of labor and time in connecting the scan and data driving circuit chips 30P and 40P to the metal field emitter array. Also, since the scan and data driving circuit chips for a high voltage are required to drive the metal field emitter array, it is difficult to implement a field emission display capable of providing a high quality picture in a low price.